They were shattered, but the wooden shingle roofs had
fallen intact and unbroken, and lay on the ground in pieces about 100
feet long, a most curious spectacle. Students of _Tom Cringle_ will
remember the gruesome description of his dinner at the Mess at Up
Park Camp, during an epidemic of yellow fever, when one officer after
another got up and left the room, pinching the regimental doctor on
the shoulder as he did so, as an intimation that he, too, had been
claimed by the yellow death. The military authorities acted unwisely
in selecting Up Park as a site for barracks. It certainly stands high,
but is shut off from the sea breeze by the hill known as Long
Mountain, and has, in addition, a dangerous swamp to windward of it,
two drawbacks which might have been foreseen.
I noticed that brick houses suffered more than stone ones. This was
attributed to the inferior mortar used by Jamaican masons, for which
there can be no excuse, for the island abounds in lime. Wooden houses
escaped scatheless. Every statue in the Public Gardens was thrown
down, except that of Queen Victoria. The superstitious negroes were
much impressed by this fact, though the earthquake had, curiously
enough, twisted the statue entirely round.
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